THE MEDIA BUSINESS

THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Consumers' Guide to Gun Culture

By ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: March 30, 1992

So you want to buy a 1950's-vintage Czechoslovak semiautomatic rifle with bayonet (a "rare find" and only $249.95 wholesale)? Or a used Smith & Wesson .357 magnum revolver ("good condition," $168.50)? Or maybe a working replica of the classic 1875 Remington Army revolver ($289.00)?

You can always try your local gun shop. But as any gun fancier knows, for the best selection and good prices, the place to look is Shotgun News.

Published three times a month by the Snell Publishing Company in Hastings, Neb., Shotgun News is a good bet, too, for those who travel the rougher edges of the gun culture. Grenades, Bazookas and Arrows

Perhaps you need a kit for converting a Chinese SKS assault rifle to full automatic -- provided, of course, that you have a special Federal license to own a machine gun? Or blueprints for building hand grenades, bazookas and the vicious arrows used by Rambo for silent killing?

And to unwind after a day of shooting, how about a videotape of "eight topless beauties" firing machine guns in the Sierra Nevada?

Modestly named, even more modest in appearance -- it is all gray ads, from front to back -- Shotgun News has over its 46 years gained a special place in the raucous world of guns and gun paraphernalia.

"The trading post for anything that shoots" is what the magazine calls itself. It is that and more, offering products that span the range of the gun culture, from valuable antique firearms to cheap new pistols to assault weapons and mannequins of Hitler and General Custer.

With a subscription price of $20 a year and a fat new issue mailed out every 10 days, Shotgun News cannot be accused of scrimping on its 140,000 subscribers. A scattering of newsstands receive copies by subscription and sell them for $1 to $3.

Shotgun News does face competition from other publications, most notably Gun List. Appearing every two weeks, Gun List has a circulation that is about half that of Shotgun News, and it tends to carry a higher proportion of ads from individual sellers rather than large distributors. As such, Shotgun News remains the leader in its field.

The magazine would appear to be a gold mine, although Robert Snell, the publisher and owner, declined to provide financial information. Recent issues ranged from about 150 pages to 200 pages each, all filled with ads. Classifieds cost 20 cents a word, while display ads cost $25 an inch or $915 for a full page. To get on the cover costs triple.

Since Shotgun News runs no articles or photographs, its editorial costs are nil. The occasional unsold spot is filled with quotations from Founding Fathers about guns and liberty: "To disarm the people (is) the best and most effectual way to enslave them . . . -- George Mason."

While the listings are mostly wholesale, Shotgun News attracts subscriptions and orders from many people who are not store owners.

By Federal law, guns cannot be sold by mail except to licensed firearms dealers. The subscribers do include many licensed shop owners. But they also include tens of thousands of people who have obtained Federal dealer's licenses -- an easy thing to do -- and buy and sell from their homes for themselves and their friends. Other readers must trade through license holders. 'I Read Every Issue'

"I read every issue," said Robert York, gunsmith at Shapel's Gun Shop in Boise, Idaho. "I would be lost without it." Mr. York said he often spotted bargains for his store in Shotgun News, and he turned there for rare parts, and guidance when appraising a collector's item.

The magazine was even more plump with ads about 10 to 12 years ago, said Duane Clark, who has been its general manager for 35 years. At the peak, it sold 275 pages worth of ads, Mr. Clark said. He attributed the drop-off to increasing legal controls on firearms that "curtail the freedom of movement." In 1968, for example, mail-order gun sales were regulated.

Ads for new guns also declined after several big firearms manufacturers, responding to complaints from gun shops, forbade distributors to publish wholesale prices of new products in the widely read magazine. Now, perhaps 90 percent of the offerings are used guns, Mr. Snell said, and new-gun prices appear only for products of smaller companies. Skirting the Edge of the Law

If it remains the nation's premier flea market for used guns, antique guns and odd parts, Shotgun News seems also to hold a special attraction for people whose tastes run to military assault rifles, large cartridge clips, flame throwers and other accouterments of would-be Rambos and survivalists. Many offerings of weapons and assembly kits skirt the edges of laws that ban possession of machine guns except by those with special Federal licenses, or that ban sale of high explosives and many military weapons.

The Hell-fire Trigger System, for example, promises to make a semiautomatic rifle, which fires a single bullet with each pull of the trigger, able to fire bursts of bullets like a machine gun -- only $29.95 for those who "want to rock 'n' roll." (Actually, it is a spring system that supposedly returns the trigger to the ready position more quickly.)

"If a guy wants to sell those things, and it's legal to do it, who am I to say he can't?" Mr. Snell said.

Of the blueprints for making grenades, bazookas and other destructive devices, Mr. Clark said, "We're not here to play morality." He added that, where relevant, he always required ad copy to include a notice that Federal and local laws apply.

"If an individual is going to commit a crime, he's going to do it whether or not he gets it from a magazine," Mr. Clark said.

John C. Killorin, chief of public affairs with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Washington, said that selling plans for such devices "is in the worst of taste, and probably unsafe, but it's legal."

"It's a First Amendment issue," he said. "But if you proceed to make the bazooka, then you're in deep trouble with us."

Mr. Killorin added, however, that Shotgun News also "has a lot of legitimate stuff of interest to shooters and collectors." Signs of the Far Right

Perusing the pages of Shotgun News yields signs of the far-right fringes of the gun culture. Classified ads for "white power" groups sometimes appear. Full-page ads for videotapes of old "Amos 'n' Andy" television shows are also prominent.

"We do run ads sometimes that are perhaps on the racial side," Mr. Clark said. But he noted, as evidence of a nondiscriminatory acceptance policy, that the magazine also carried ads from a Jewish anti-gun control group.

Years ago, he said, the magazine carried Ku Klux Klan ads. "We stopped when we got some letters complaining about them," he said.

Photo: Shotgun News calls itself "the trading post for anything that shoots," and Robert Snell, above, its publisher, says, "If a guy wants to sell those things, and it's legal to do it, who am I to say he can't?" (Rick Houchin for The New York Times)